Sunday, October 30, 2005

Thursday, October 27, 2005

My Ancestors Would Be Proud...

I hate being busy. I hate doing things. I hate going in public places. I hate being around people. I don't like to do things that're proposed to me by others. I'd rather slowly stir those things around and see how I feel about them later. I feel like I've done it all before, I know what to expect and that nothing is new to me.

I don't like to exercise, walk, hike or go to the gym. I hate the mall. I hate to shop and would rather not go than to just look around. I hate parking lots and hate how people drive. I hate the internal combustion engine. I hate loud noises. I hate car horns. I hate screeching. I hate wailing sirens and people yelling out, "Fuck You's!" to each other as they accelerate away.

I don't like working. I hate stifling sparks of creativity and, if you're lucky, making do with scribbling down that amazing idea on a nearby scrap of paper and cramming it into your pocket because you can't write more about it at work. I hate rules. I hate the hot smell of paper that comes out of the copier. I hate file cabinets. I hate food. I hate tips. I hate cranky, ass old people. I hate people in a hurry. I hate fat guts. I hate having too many options when I call customer service. I hate that the same woman's recorded voice is on the phone regardless of what department I call because it's just like seeing the same commercial on the TV every single time you turn it on.

I hate. I'm unmotivated. I'm lazy. I have no drive. No will. No discipline. I hate.

Yes, I do.

But I love this post. Yes. I love it. And I love this Coca-Cola over here to my right. I love that I just wasted 17 minutes doing something that I shouldn't be doing and that nobody can take that time back from me because I've already spent it.

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

No More Vodka Redbulls For me...

The cement fairies must've poured cement in my ears while I was sleeping last night. I can't even focus. Let alone put together sentences - but I'll try...

Saw a friend at my girlfriend's work yesterday as he was picking something up to go. He said that he was buckling down and training at a mortgage company. Kind of surprising to me considering how arty he is. I started to tell him about the new, other thing that I've been doing when I'm not serving and bartending. We talked about both getting older and needing real jobs and more money, blah blah blah. After he left, I thought about how boring our two new jobs sounded. How old and unoriginal - but totally necessary. Especially for two college dropouts. I started to think about what some of my other friends were doing too. Mutual funds. English teacher. Graphic design. Commercial insurance. Printing. Legal video documentation. Flight attendant. Fed Ex. Bartenders. Servers. Bouncers. Boring.

I tried to be good and think harder. Surely some of my friends must be doing unique and wondrous things? Okay. We had one commercial jet pilot. Ummm...a couple of people in pretty popular bands, all right. Uhhh...nothing else?

No porn stars? No gourmet chefs with popular daytime TV series? No comic book artists, no founders of cults, no dolphin trainers?

What happened? Am I forgetting some of my friend's interesting jobs? Does a friend of mine having an interesting job, somehow, in a way, validate my mundane existence? Does our being in our late twenties, stuck somewhere in the thirties or maybe passing forty years old pretty much make us old? Does this mean that this is it? Get a job, even if it's boring because the relationship, starving child's mouth or empty wallet demand it? Is an interesting life sometimes defined by what one does when out of the workplace or when one has the time to be themselves?

Do I only exist off the clock?

My head is mushy. My skin is hot. My left butt cheek aches, for whatever reason - I don't know, and my eyes aren't focusing well. I think it's time to put my brain to bed and to get through the next 2 hours and 12 minutes.

Friday, October 14, 2005

My Brain Is Dying...

After work I went to the corner store to buy a six pack of Coke. Minutes after that, on the way home I stopped at the gas station. I came home and realized as I was putting them away that I BOUGHT TWO six-packs and didn't even realize it. I got nothing else. What the hell is happening to me? I'm like Charlie from Flowers For Algernon. After the operation, when he starts to become retarded again. Except, I guess in my case - I was always dumb and now I'm just getting dumber.

I think this beats the time when I was at the front door and trying to find my house keys and then realized that they were still in my car while the car was running.

Monday, October 10, 2005

Excerpt from a Speech by Bill Watterson @Kenyon College, Gambier Ohio, to the 1990 graduating class.

"It's surprising how hard we'll work when the work is done just for ourselves. And with all due respect to John Stuart Mill, maybe utilitarianism is overrated. If I've learned one thing from being a cartoonist, it's how important playing is to creativity and happiness. My job is essentially to come up with 365 ideas a year.If you ever want to find out just how uninteresting you really are, get a job where the quality and frequency of your thoughts determine your livelihood. I've found that the only way I can keep writing every day, year after year, is to let my mind wander into new territories. To do that, I've had to cultivate a kind of mental playfulness.

We're not really taught how to recreate constructively. We need to do more than find diversions; we need to restore and expand ourselves. Our idea of relaxing is all too often to plop down in front of the television set and let its pandering idiocy liquefy our brains. Shutting off the thought process is not rejuvenating; the mind is like a car battery-it recharges by running.You may be surprised to find how quickly daily routine and the demands of "just getting by: absorb your waking hours. You may be surprised to find how quickly you start to see your politics and religion become matters of habit rather than thought and inquiry. You may be surprised to find how quickly you start to see your life in terms of other people's expectations rather than issues. You may be surprised to find out how quickly reading a good book sounds like a luxury."

At school, new ideas are thrust at you every day. Out in the world, you'll have to find the inner motivation to search for new ideas on your own. With any luck at all, you'll never need to take an idea and squeeze a punchline out of it, but as bright, creative people, you'll be called upon to generate ideas and solutions all your lives. Letting your mind play is the best way to solve problems.For me, it's been liberating to put myself in the mind of a fictitious six year-old each day, and rediscover my own curiosity. I've been amazed at how one ideas leads to others if I allow my mind to play and wander. I know a lot about dinosaurs now, and the information has helped me out of quite a few deadlines.A playful mind is inquisitive, and learning is fun. If you indulge your natural curiosity and retain a sense of fun in new experience, I think you'll find it functions as a sort of shock absorber for the bumpy road ahead.

So, what's it like in the real world? Well, the food is better, but beyond that, I don't recommend it.

Saturday, October 08, 2005

Off the top of my head...

even though i love alec empire - when he talks all of his revolutionary/german political stuff - I'm at a loss. He's just too vague. But he rocks. Kind of like Elvis Presley and Hitler beating the shit out of each other while one sings and the other yells at the top of his lungs.

this is the first time that I've worn a sweater in a long, long time. I'm happy about this, but I should feel a lot cooler than I feel right now, because i feel like a dork. I wanted to wear something dark, scary, fashionably wrong or just plain boring - but sitting here looking like I do - just makes me feel like I'm an older boy writing a bunch of shit on a computer while the girlfriend gets ready. But I do have my fingernails painted - so maybe I'm not that old - just kind of retarded.

read warren ellis' Fell and/or Desolation Jones comic books. do it.

man, i love those nights when nothing's really happening and then you return the phone calls of a couple of friends (something that I'm trying to do w/ more regularity) and then it just turns into a whole shashed bang job of getting straight-pissed and then you wake up all head-thudded and w/ a friend on the couch asleep and then you take him home and remember that you have pictures of him putting his balls into Michelle's really expensive, fancy heels in your camera. this was w/ her permission, of course.

durka durka! what movie is that quote from?

my back still hurts from lifting a box of comic books last week

i dread bartending tomorrow night

my girlfriend is taking TWO hours to get ready and by the time that we arrive at the bar - it will be late. I'll have four drinks combined w/ the million that I'm having right now, and then when the bar closes and she's ready to pass out due to her two total drinks - I'll want to keep on going. This will cause some drunken strife. She'll also be up at 8 in the morning and I will be squealing like a freshly-shucked newborn from the vagina of a sweaty mother. I will regret that last sentence tomorrow morning when I re-remember it.

i like dean martin. much. not as much as drinking, but much. those last two words sounded like I was saying BUTT MUNCH. If you had a BUTT MUNCH for LUNCH then it would be a BUTT MUNCH LUNCH.

Friday, October 07, 2005

Bloc Party...

April (friend, not the month) had left. I started to watch The Peter Jennings Collection: Disc 1 with the girlfriend, who, of course, fell asleep. Right when we we're getting to the special report on Ecstasy and on the report about the history of the L.A.P.D. too! I bet when the Martians land and I have documented proof to show her on DVD - Sleeping Beauty'll miss that also, so no big deal.

Tony had flaked on me earlier. He was supposed to come over hours ago to pick up most of the old comic books of his that I was going to sell on eBay but never got really around to because I've got too many of mine that I'm trying to do the same to also.

Just a minute ago, Tom/friend and neighbor - scared the shit out of me while I was smoking in my backyard.

So. Mr. White Shirt Lead Guitarist Tony and Mr. Black Shirt Singer Tom are tonight's flake and boogeyman. I curse them. Watch them and curse them. Ask them to apologize while you watch this.